11 June 2018 The Hindu by la Excellence – CivilsPrep

New Delhi looks to SCO as promising framework in effort to build new bridges

In a significant gesture Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Pakistani president Mammon Hussain shook hands and exchanged pleasantries at SCO. India appears to be rebalancing its ties with Pakistan in order to build bridges with Eurasia with in the framework of Shanghai cooperation organisation.

SCO also called for an open, inclusive, transparent, non discriminatory and rules based multilateral trading regime. It stressed on opposing every form of trade protectionism.

In the summit, leaders also talked about the special role of the SCO regional anti terrorist structure in the fight against three evils – terrorism, Extremism and Separatism.

Call for front to fight terror

The Shanghai cooperation organisation resolved to fight terror, separatism and extremism with a renewed vigour. It called for a global front under the coordination of United Nations.

No easy solutions

RERA suggested A bad bank is not a magic bullet. Tackling NPA’s requires other structural reforms too. These include

Amend prevention of corruption of act to shield bankers and officers from investigative witch hunt.

Effectively implementing insolvency and Bankruptcy code.

Ceasing fire

The Taliban’s announcement of three day cease fire with Afghanistan Government troops on the occasion of Eid is a ray of hope for peace. It followed unconditional week long ceasefire declared by President Ashraf Ghani. But caution is ceasefire of Taliban do not apply to foreign troops on Afghan soil.

If the situation is carefully observed, there is a stalemate between Afghanistan Government and Taliban. Rural and Mountainous stretches are dominated by Taliban and Urban areas by Taliban. Taliban insist that foreign troops be withdrawn, while the Government demands that the group accept the Afghanistan constitution.

Open data, open Government

Today, most of the decision in private sector are data driven. But, Governmental decision making still lingers on old methods. Data remains an under-utilised asset and this closed data is not helping innovation. Effective use of data can add an additional 1.5% of value to the country’s GDP.

Major advantages of open data are

Welfare programs can be better directed.

Increased transparency can build trust.

Technology led innovations are possible.

Five point framework to address current underlying execution gaps. These are

To ensure completeness of data stacks opened for use either through machine readable formats or direct API’s

Comprehensiveness of various data sets is essential.

Clustering of different data sets and API’s

Building anchor cases or use cases to encourage data usage.

Setting up of a comprehensive governance framework that includes an open data council with proper oversight mechanism.

Why no one is worried about MPCs rate hike

Banks have anticipated this. Some even raised their interest rates as per the market requirements. This in response to rise in global interest rates.

Bond yields were raising due to external and internal factors. Demand

so, the market is able to take an upper hand over the decisions of RBI. As RBI started making its decision on single most criteria of CPI, its decision are losing sight of many factors. Ex – GDP numbers, foreign flows etc.

Draw the line for speakers and Governors

Office of the speaker and governor are the most politicised constitutional offices in india. Speaker is more loyal to the party he comes form and governor to the party in power at centre.

Discretionary authority to the speaker under anti defection law and to governor under art 163 of the constitution are playing havoc with democracy.

Mauritius to host global Hindi meet

The event is expected to cover both classical and modern elements of Hindi.

Rise in India – ASEAN naval games

Military – Military cooperation is increasing between India and ASEAN. A joint Naval exercise is scheduled between India and Indonesia in Java sea. A new trilateral exercise is also expected to start with Thailand and Singapore.